China flies first international cargo flight on domestic SAF

In China, the Global Times newspaper reports that for the first time, China’s domestically developed and manufactured SAF powered an international cargo flight, arriving in Belgium after taking off 12 hours earlier in Hangzhou.

Sinopec Zhenhai Refinery of China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation obtained a bio-jet fuel airworthiness certificate issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) on September 19. The first batch of bio-jet fuel was shipped to the Airbus (China) Tianjin plant the same month. The fuel is derived from used cooking oil.

The refinery, in the Zhenhai District of Ningbo, Zhejiang province, has an annual designed processing capacity of 100,000 tons and adopts Sinopec’s bio-jet fuel production technology (SRJET) to produce the fuel. The plant’s first batch in June produced around 600 tons of bio-jet fuel.